The photographs showed young, indigenous children from the northern Ontario reserve of Kashechewan, their bodies covered in angry red sores. Their skin diseases, caused by overcrowding and poor hygiene, had been exacerbated by the extra chlorine added to the dirty brown water that came out of the taps.

Thousands of First Nations people endure living conditions akin to those in the developing world on remote, northern reserves, many without running water or sewage treatment, and where the infant mortality rate is three times the norm and the rate of suicide is six times the national average.

Most of the time, most Canadians tend to forget about the native people on their desolate reserves. Until, that is, there is a crisis, such as happened in 1993, when six Innu children in Labrador were videotaped sniffing gasoline, screaming that they wanted to die.

The Kaschechewan crisis is milder. No one is going to die from scabies or impetigo, or from burns made more painful by heavily-chlorinated water, although contaminated drinking water is potentially deadly. Still, the media reports have prompted public outrage and intense pressure on all levels of government to do something.

The provincial government in Ontario, Canada's wealthiest province, was the first to act, ordering an emergency evacuation for those most affected by exposure to the water, which had high levels of E coli. There is no road into Kashechewan, so aeroplanes were chartered to take more than 900 of the most vulnerable people to cities further south. The move already appears unnecessary - Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper reports that the drinking water was safe to consume by the time the evacuees were settled in hotel rooms around the province.

Then the federal government acted, promising to build a new community for the roughly 2,000 residents, with clean water, 12 nurses and maybe a new school. Prime minister Paul Martin also vowed to clean up dirty drinking water on 85 other reserves.

Reporters asked Mr Martin, who had promised to make aboriginal issues a priority, whether he was embarrassed about Kashechewan. "The federal government must obviously accept its responsibility and we do so, and action is going to be taken," he said.

Back on the reserve, the Cree chief, Leo Friday, was greeted as a conquering hero. His people had had problems with the water for years because it was drawn from a nearby river, downstream from where sewage is dumped, and his band had been asking for help for a long time. Now a media campaign organised by the head of the primary school had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, and would mean a fresh start.

If only a fresh start was a guarantee of a happy ending. It isn't. Federal and provincial governments have spent millions on the Innu of Davis Inlet, the Labrador community of the 1993 kids-high-on-gas-fumes notoriety.

There, the 700 residents were moved to a new, but still isolated settlement. The new houses and schools didn't fix the underlying problems that lead to the chronic, collective depression seen on so many reserves - high unemployment, alcoholism, spousal and child abuse, a generation of damaged parents struggling to come to terms with the end of the nomadic existence they were raised in, or who have no idea how to look after their kids because they were taken from their own families as children and sent away to distant residential schools. At those schools, many were beaten for speaking their own language, or sexually and physically abused.

The exceptions are the relatively few bands with access to valuable natural resources such as oil and gas, or have signed lucrative land claims settlements and obtained a degree of autonomy over their own affairs.

Canada has a shameful history of racism towards aboriginal people, who now number roughly 900,000. Years of misguided policies have pushed many First Nations people onto remote reserves where making a living by hunting and trapping can be hard or even impossible, but few other economic opportunities exist.

Native leaders are not blameless. There have been well-documented reports of corruption on some reserves, and discrimination against leadership challengers on others.

What to do? Nobody has the answers. While there are remarkable individual success stories - including many aboriginal people who climbed to the top of their professions in business, politics and the arts - many natives who move from reserves to more southern cities like Winnipeg get caught in the cycle of poverty and substance abuse.

Still, you have to start somewhere, and clean water and decent housing at least offer hope of a healthier beginning.